Engineering students at the school's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, however, are not required to complete the test.

The reason? Well, in the event of a flood, engineering students could simply whip up a bridge or a boat to escape the raging water (at least, that's what the tour guides at Columbia will jokingly tell you).

Exemption from the swim test isn't the only perk of majoring in engineering at Columbia. Graduates of this program also typically go on to earn pretty hefty paychecks.

We recently reviewed PayScale's latest College Salary Report to get a sense of which school's engineering students go on to earn the most money — and found that Columbia landed the No. 5 spot.

PayScale, the creator of the world's largest compensation database, looked at the starting and mid-career pay for over a million college grads — including professionals who graduated with a bachelor's from 963 colleges and universities.

Its College Salary Report, which was compiled using data from employees who successfully completed PayScale's employee survey, sorts the results by school, degree, and college major.

Here are the 27 schools where students with a bachelor's in engineering go on to earn the most money 10-plus years into their career: